CHAPTER IX
Origin and Progress of the Shire
It is evident that a breed of comparatively heavy horses existed in Britain at the time of the Roman Invasion, when Queen Boadicea’s warriors met Cæsar’s fighting men (who were on foot) in war chariots drawn by active but powerful horses, remarkable—as Sir Walter Gilbey’s book on “The Great Horse” says—for “strength, substance, courage and docility.”
These characteristics have been retained and improved upon all down the ages since. The chariot with its knives, or blades, to mow down the enemy was superseded by regiments of cavalry, the animals ridden being the Old English type of War Horse. In those days it was the lighter or second-rate animals, what we may call “the culls,” which were left for agricultural purposes. The English knight, when clad in armour, weighed something like 4 cwt., therefore a weedy animal would have sunk under such a burden.
This evidently forced the early breeders to avoid long backs by breeding from strong-loined, deep-ribbed and well coupled animals, seeing that slackness meant weakness and, therefore, worthlessness for war purposes.
It is easy to understand that a long-backed, light-middled mount with a weight of 4 cwt. on his back would simply double up when stopped suddenly by the rider to swing his battle axe at the head of his antagonist, so we find from pictures and plates that the War Horse of those far-off days was wide and muscular in his build, very full in his thighs, while the saddle in use reached almost from the withers to the hips, thus proving that the back was short.
There came a time, however, when speed and mobility were preferred to mere weight. The knight cast away his armour and selected a lighter and fleeter mount than the War Horse of the ancient Britons.
The change was, perhaps, began at the battle of Bannockburn in 1314. It is recorded that Robert Bruce rode a “palfrey” in that battle, on which he dodged the charges of the ponderous English knights, and he took a very heavy toll, not only of English warriors but of their massive horses; therefore it is not unreasonable to suppose that some of the latter were used for breeding purposes, and thus helped to build up the Scottish, or Clydesdale, breed of heavy horses; but what was England’s loss became Scotland’s gain, in that the Clydesdale breed had a class devoted to it at the Highland Society’s Show in 1823, whereas his English relative, “the Shire,” did not receive recognition by the Royal Agricultural Society of England till 1883, sixty years later. As a War Horse the British breed known as “The Great Horse” seems to have been at its best between the Norman Conquest, 1066, and the date of Bannockburn above-mentioned, owing to the fact that the Norman nobles, who came over with William the Conqueror, fought on horseback, whereas the Britons of old used to dismount out of their chariots, and fight on foot. The Battle of Hastings was waged between Harold’s English Army of infantry-men and William the Conqueror’s Army of horsemen, ending in a victory for the latter.
The Flemish horses thus became known to English horse breeders, and they were certainly used to help lay the foundation of the Old English breed of cart horses.